The Approach of Optimality Theory to Reduplication in Persian

In recent years, morphology has been one of the most debated areas of study in generative grammar, so that different researches on different languages have led to various approaches and theories in the field. This article aims at studying a productive word-formation process in Persian, i.e. reduplication, from the point of view of one of the latest approaches in generative grammar, i.e. Optimality Theory. We attempt to analyze the structure of some types of (total and partial) reduplication in Persian in the framework of Standard Optimality Theory, also known as Correspondence Theory. The results of the study indicate that in different contexts, a particular type of faithfulness or markedness constraints is required to describe the structure of each type of reduplication in Persian, based on the pattern they depict and the meaning they convey.